Documents released yesterday as a result of litigation brought by Yahoo show how the court charged with assessing government intelligence surveillance requests secretly applied a broad exception to the Fourth Amendment to authorize sweeping surveillance of digital records without a warrant. The FISA Court (FISC) opined that this exception to the Fourth Amendment permits programmatic surveillance of many individuals – including Americans – with no connection to a crime or terrorism.

The New York State Department of Financial Services recently proposed sweeping regulations for digital currencies – the first such rules in the United States dedicated to digital currency – that would require this burgeoning privacy-friendly industry to watch their users’ every move.

A judge that served on the secretive U.S. court that authorizes U.S. government surveillance issued a letter raising concerns with a new Senate bill to reform NSA surveillance. CDT supports the Senate version of the USA FREEDOM Act, in part because the bill proposes an independent voice for civil liberties at the FISC while preserving flexibility for the court. We believe Judge Bate’s concerns are not compelling reasons to eliminate the FISC reforms in USA FREEDOM.

Today Senator Patrick Leahy introduced a new version of the USA FREEDOM Act, which CDT strongly supports. This bill directly addresses many issues identified by CDT immediately after passage of the problematic House version of the bill, and includes many changes that CDT specifically recommended.

The Center for Democracy & Technology has publicly withdrawn their support of the USA FREEDOM Act (H.R. 3361). This is disappointing as many civil liberties groups strongly supported USA FREEDOM since its introduction last year. The major sticking point for is how the bill’s definition of “specific selection term” recently changed in the Rules Committee Manager’s Amendment.

A CDT-led coalition of public interest groups and Internet companies issued a letter to key members of the House of Representatives. The letter calls on House Leadership to improve the USA FREEDOM Act before passing the bill out of the House.

Our favored legislation to reform the NSA’s surveillance programs, the USA FREEDOM Act is finally moving forward. Today, the House Judiciary Committee announced a markup of the USA FREEDOM Act for this Wednesday afternoon. Congressional action on NSA surveillance is long overdue.

Members of Congress and the Obama Administration have drafted several proposals addressing bulk collection. CDT, as well as many other public interest groups, supports only one of these – the USA FREEDOM Act. CDT breaks down each of the major proposals.

Today CDT joined a coalition of public interest groups spanning the political spectrum in a letter to Congress and the President calling for an end to all forms of bulk collection of data on individuals, above and beyond just phone records.

In response to the public uproar over mass surveillance, and a lawsuit brought by Internet companies, the U.S. government recently established rules to allow companies to report some details on surveillance demands in intelligence investigations. However, the government carefully worded its new rules in a way that still obscures the true scope of surveillance on companies’ users.